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10-H17372-2 OP« 




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COLLEGES ESSENTIAL TO HOME MISSIONS 






DISCOURSE, 



DELIVERED AT THE 



NINTH ANNIVERSARY 



i 





Sjoftttts for % f r0W0inm af CxrlUgiate aifo fliealjopal 



CENTRAL CHURCH, BOSTON, MASS. 
Octobee 27, 1852. 











if 

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EDWIN HALL, D.D., 

PASTOR OF THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH. NORWALK, CONN. 



NEW- YORK: 
JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER, 49 ANN STREET. 
1853. 



■C3Tr€3-: - 








COLLEQES ESSENTIAL TO HOME MISSIONS. 



DISCOURSE. 



DEEIYEBED AT THE 



NINTH ANN1TEBSABY 



i0tietg for i\t %xamiian.ai £*Ibptit an& Cko logical 
itamta at tte Mesf, 



CENTRAL CHURCH, BOSTON, MASS, 
Octobee 27, 1852. 



BY 



EDWIN HALL, D.D., 

PASTOR OF THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHrRCH. SOSWilK. COMU 




NBW-YOKK: 

JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER, 49 ANN STREET. 

1S53. 






" The thanks of the Board were presented to the Rev. Edwin 
Hall, D. D., for his Discourse, delivered before the Society last even- 
ing, and a copy requested for publication." 

An extract from the minutes of the Proceedings of the Directors 
of the Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Edu- 
cation at the "West, at their Annual Meeting at Boston, Mass., Oct. 
28th, 1852, 

A. D. Eddy, Sec'y. 



SERMON 



EPHESIAXS, IV. 11, 12. 

"And he gave some, apostles ; and some, prophets ; and some, evan- 
gelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the 
saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of 
Christ. 

IN the work of upbuilding and perpetuating the 
Church, our Lord, from time to time, employs men 
in various capacities. Noah the preacher of right- 
eousness, Abraham the father of many nations, Mo- 
ses, Aaron, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Ezra, Xehemiah, 
each has his work according to the necessities of his 
day. John the Baptist has his work, the apostles 
have theirs. As there are diversities of labors, so 
there are diversities of gifts. All are not prophets ; 
all are not apostles ; for as the body is one, and hath 
many members, so also is Christ. If bishops and 
deacons are established in the organization of each 
particular Church, evangelists are also sent to labor 
where the Church is not. The great Head over all 
things to the Church hath committed to him all 
power in heaven and in earth ; and is not limited to 
agents or methods. He can say to the deep, u Be 



dry : " and of Cyrus, " He is my shepherd, and shall 
perform all my pleasure ; even saying to Jerusalem, 
Thou shall be built ; and to the Temple, Thy foun- 
dations shall be laid." He can make kings nursing 
fathers, and queens nursing mothers to his Church. 
The ships of Tarshish first shall bring his sons from 
far. The kings of the isles shall bring presents ; the 
kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Fire, 
hail, snow, and vapor, fulfilling his word, shall be 
enlisted in the cause of Zion. In a sense» unknown 
to the Psalmist, fire and "'vapor are yet to fulfil the 
pleasure of the Lord. Perhaps, also, in a sense which 
prophets never imagined, "a highway shall be 
there ; " and there shall be made " straight in the 
desert a highway for our Grod : every valley shall 
be exalted, and every mountain shall be made low, 
and the crooked shall be made straight, and the 
rough places plain." Now the Lord furnishes the la- 
borers with the gift of tongues ; now with the press ; 
now they are scattered abroad preaching the word ; 
now they bear up against persecution ; now they re- 
sist unto blood, witnessing against the abominations 
of antichrist; now they cross the seas, and found 
new homes for religion and freedom in the wilder- 
ness. As each disciple has his work, so have the 
people of each generation. Besides the duties uni- 
versally and permanently binding on all the people 
of God, the Lord is perpetually leading each gene- 
ration of his people, in each land, to some special 
work which they alone can fulfil, and which, if well 
done, proves the glory of their age. 

Thus one generation of our fathers were called 



to stand for religious purity and freedom, and to 
suffer in their native land ; another was called to be 
pilgrims, and to be " stepping stones " for others in 
a labor for Christ in the wilderness ; another was 
called to contend for the possession of the land 
against a formidable Papal power ; another to sever 
it from the dominion of the mother country ; then 
to form our constitution : for we love to believe that 
all these labors were done for Christ, and under his 
direction, whether all the laborers so meant it or 
not. 

As to the work to. which God specially calls his 
people in this land and in this generation, there re- 
mains no possible doubt. It is to plant the institu- 
tions of the Gospel in all our widely extending set- 
tlements, and to save this country for Christ, now 
while its character is in the forming state. In order 
to form a just conception of the work to be done, 
let us first survey the field ; then consider how it is 
to be cultivated ; and then the nature, and relative 
importance of the work undertaken by this Society, 
with reference to this great end. 

1. Sttevey the Field. Here is a vast country 
spreading through all climates, capable of yielding 
nearly all the productions of the earth, rich in mine- 
ral resources, and with its commodious harbors, its 
innumerable lakes and rivers, furnishing facilities 
for commerce, the like of which, on so vast a scale, 
is found nowhere else on the globe. 

For some thousands of years, this land had been 
kept vacant. Monuments of a strange people are 
found here and there, betokening some advance in 



the arts of civilizatioD, but the people are gone, and 
who shall declare their history ? About three hun- 
dred and sixty years ago, this vast region was made 
known to the civilized world. Why then ? Why 
not earlier? Why not later? The world was 
ready for it then. Had it been discovered before, 
this land would now have been in a condition as 
hopeless as that of the most despotic nations of Eu- 
rope. Had the discovery been longer delayed, the 
germs of freedom which have here expanded and 
grown with so much hope for man, might, in that 
delay, have perished. For reasons not yet fully com- 
prehended, the Lord suffered the subjects of the Pope 
to establish themselves first, in what were supposed 
the fairest and richest portions of the field, while for 
another hundred years, the English Pilgrims were 
under discipline to fit them for their work. Never 
was there before so auspicious a field ; never was 
there before a people so prepared. 

We need not detail the means by which God 
brought them here, and then maintained them ; nor 
the means by which he defeated the designs of po- 
pery in this field. Its power was the strongest. Its 
plans were far-reaching, formed with consummate 
wisdom, and pressed with indomitable perseverance. 
It held the North. It advanced up the St. Law- 
rence, and founded its establishments and fortresses 
along the lakes, on the plains of Illinois, and on the 
banks of the Mississippi. It held Mexico. It held 
Florida. It pushed its fortresses down the Ohio, 
with the design to prescribe, and finally to extermi- 
nate the few scattered colonies, which were identi- 



fied with the cause of truth and freedom in the des- 
tinies of this vast continent. I need not tell how 
God wrested Canada from its grasp, and freed our 
fathers from a subtle and dangerous foe on the 
North ; how he defeated its designs on the Ohio ; 
how he severed this land from the mother country 
when her help was no longer needed, and when her 
power and designs were hostile to the growth of the 
colonies, and to their enjoyment of true religious 
liberty. Then God took Louisiana from the control 
of the Pope ; a domain large enough for kingdoms ; 
a loss to the man of sin eventually greater than to 
lose several of the most important kingdoms of Eu- 
rope. Then Florida was added to the area of free- 
dom and truth. Then Texas; then New Mexico 
and California ; alas, I say not by what measures 
and what injustice on the part of man ; I speak only 
of the manifest and merciful designs of the Lord, 
who causeth the wrath of man to praise him, and 
the remainder of wrath he will restrain. 

Observe, also, the hand of the Lord in another 
respect, In the early days of the colonies, their 
remoteness, and the difficulties of their situation se- 
cure their religious liberties. When they become 
independent the dense forest shuts in their Western 
border. Population must advance slowly, with in- 
describable toil ; this gives time for our new insti- 
tutions to become consolidated, and for the native 
population to multiply to such an extent as not to 
be overwhelmed by an immense and promiscuous 
emigration from foreign lands. At length the na- 
tion comes into such a state, that with almost any 



8 



possible amount of emigration it shall remain Ameri- 
can, and our institutions and religious liberties be pre- 
served. By the time that this is accomplished, then 
the tide of emigrants has reached the great lakes, and 
is rushing through the passes of the Mississippi. It 
spreads abroad over the immense prairies all ready 
for the culture of the plough. Just at this period, 
famine and oppression stir up several of the nations 
of Europe, so that nothing but the lack of ability, 
and the limited means of transportation, prevents 
their landing in solid masses upon our shores. And 
now, also, the Lord has designs to be accomplished 
on the borders of the Pacific, and probably among 
the Asiatic nations beyond. It is needful to bring 
with all speed an immense population to California. 
For this purpose, as it appears, He has, from the 
creation, stored up the treasures of gold, which, 
when the time has come, shall draw countless mul- 
titudes thither. In two short years these multitudes 
have crossed the plains, and poured through the 
passes of the Rocky Mountains. They have doubled 
the Southern Cape ; they have poured in streams 
across the isthmus ; they have ascended the waters 
of the Pacific ; they have formed an American State 
on the shores of the ocean that unites the West with 
the East. 

In all these great designs, so linked together, and 
so adjusted to each other in time, the Lord appears 
to have some great and good purpose to accomplish 
for the nations of the earth, and for his cause, by 
means of this American land ; and to us he commits 
the great work of making this land Christian. 



"What, then,* is this land ? what are its capacities 
and prospects? Here are twenty-four millions of 
people ; yet the one strong impression of an inhabit- 
ant of the Eastern shore as he travels Westward, 
is, that the land is well-nigh vacant. Ohio, that 
within the recollection of many here present was 
almost an unbroken wilderness, now pushes hard 
upon two millions of inhabitants ; yet as the stran- 
ger passes through the central parts of the State, 
from her beautiful city on Lake Erie to her metro- 
polis on the Ohio, he finds, for a hundred miles toge- 
ther, a forest, broken at distances by now and then 
a clearing and a settlement; a dense, primeval 
forest of trees whose height and magnitude fill him 
with wonder, even after a familiar acquaintance with 
the primitive forests yet remaining in the North and 
East. He passes down the waters of the Ohio, 
winding among hills and dales interspersed at dis- 
tances with bottom lands of exceeding richness and 
beauty ; he passes by numerous towns and villages ; 
but the great impression that remains on his mind 
is, that the land is well-nigh vacant. Onward he 
passes for hundreds of miles : at times the hills seem 
to recede and to disclose an unlimited prospect of 
the valleys and plains of Indiana on one side, and 
of Kentucky on the other : but the impression re- 
mains that the land is well-nigh vacant. As he en- 
ters the Mississippi, he catches a glimpse of the 
broad and rapid stream, rolling its deep current 
downward between two immense walls of forests. 
The steamer meets the current as it turns to the 
North, and quivers at every joint. With difficulty 



10 



she struggles onward against a stream every where 
boiliDg, eddying, and rejoicing in its might, and 
every where bordered by an immense dark forest. 
Onward the traveller passes, his heart swelling with 
strange emotions of loneliness and grandeur. He 
passes amid solitudes so vast that it seems to him as 
though a New England State might be laid down 
there and lost, till it should be forgotten. The 
smoke of St. Louis at length appears rising above 
the forests in the distance. On the one side rise the 
castellated rocks and bluffs of Missouri, on the 
other spread out the vast intervale, or bottom lands 
of Illinois ; nearly equalling in extent, and rivalling 
in richness the land of Egypt when it was the gran- 
ary of the world. He enters the great State, and 
crosses the great river of Missouri. He ascends the 
table lands which overlook the valleys of the three 
great rivers, the Missouri, the Mississippi, and the 
Illinois. He gazes, till on every side vision is lost 
in the distance, over the widespread fertile plains. 
But though St. Louis is at his feet with her almost 
one hundred thousand inhabitants ; though here and 
there large and lovely villages dot these plains, the 
impression remains, that the land is well-nigh va- 
cant. Here the streams of emigrants that pour in 
countless numbers along the valley of the Missis- 
sippi and over the great lakes, spread themselves 
out and are lost. The traveller once more pursues 
his way. He passes along the Eastern border of 
Iowa, now and then climbing the bluffs that skirt 
the river, to the table lands from fifty to two hun- 
dred feet above ; and though he has advanced some 



11 



hundreds of miles, lie sees every where spread out 
that same interminable rolling prairie, with its 
waving grass, and its occasional groves of trees ; but 
the land is well-nigh vacant. He ascends beyond the 
limits of the vast State of Illinois — he has coasted 
along its Western shore for six hundred miles, and 
most of the way her fertile plains have been spread 
out before him like one vast natural garden. He 
reaches Wisconsin. The river which below him re- 
ceives the accession of such streams as the Ohio, the 
Missouri, the Des Moines and the Iowa, seems 
scarcely to have abated any thing of its breadth or 
volume. He passes the romantic Dubuque, and the 
lovely Prairie du Chien ; he leaves the abodes of 
civilized man ; he enters the Mississippi Highlands, 
where the broad river spreading wide its surface, 
and embosoming numberless islands of green grass 
and groves of trees, winds between bluffs wrought, as 
if by the hand of art, into every possible form of 
variety and beauty ; now the smooth conical hill, 
covered as if with a shaven lawn, and tufted at the 
summit with a cluster of trees ; now rising into a 
broad mountain side, still covered with a smooth 
lawn, and dotted with trees like an orchard; now a 
steep conical mound crowned with rocks seeming 
like the magnificent ruins of some ancient castle. 
Xow a deep ravine opens far back into the land, 
disclosing ravine opening into ravine in the distance, 
and valley opening into valley, bordered by cliffs, ter- 
minating, and succeeded by other valleys and cliffs 
in endless succession. Xow he passes clusters of 
islands, and now the mouth of a broad river. Xow 



12 



the river expands into a lake, along whose shores 
receding at a distance rise romantic cliffs, softened 
into tints of beauty by the smoky atmosphere of 
summer, and fringed at their bases by continuous 
forests. Onward he passes amid scenery whose 
mingled wilclness and beauty, and whose exhaustless 
variety never suffer the eye to rest for nearly two 
hundred miles ; but, where, save now and then an In- 
dian village, or a solitary woodcutter's hut, or a cou- 
ple of log cabins in a woody ravine, already digni- 
fied as a county seat, all is a wilderness. From now 
and then a roving way passenger he learns, that as 
you pass up these ravines and reach the table land 
above, the same expanse of prairie and timber, and the 
same gently rolling surface of fertile lands spread out 
in interminable prospects, as he saw it so many hun- 
dred miles below. The voyage of a thousand miles 
from the mouth of the Ohio is at length completed. 
He ascends the high bluff to the flourishing town of 
St. Paul's. He lifts up his eyes, and how immense the 
fields of forest and prairie which are spread out be- 
fore him there ! He passes the hills that skirt the 
rear of the town ; he crosses the prairie where the 
eye scarcely reaches the dim forest that bounds the 
Eastern horizon. He reaches the Falls of St. Antho- 
ny, where he meets again a New England village, 
with every token of thrift, order and comfort ; while 
the smooth green native meadow spreads round 
them like an ocean, with dim island forests in the 
distance. He descends the stream, and climbs the 
high bluff where stands Fort Snelling, on a site un- 
surpassed for the richness of the field spread out 



13 



"before the vision on every side. He gazes upon the 
valley of the Minnesota ; with what beauty do the 
mingled prairies and woodlands slope down to the 
peaceful river, natural parks and meadows, equalling 
the most beautiful and best cultivated portions of 
the valley of the Hudson or of the Connecticut, and 
extending in endless succession till vision fades away 
in the distance ; but in all this region, looking West- 
ward, save the abodes of a few missionaries, there is 
no dwelling of civilized man. Here a tract of land 
larger than New England, has recently been ac- 
quired by treaty from the aborigines ; and here, fifty 
years hence, will be another New England in the 
West. 

And now the traveller pauses and thinks of the 
regions around him. Below him the Mississippi 
opens a navigation of twenty-two hundred miles to 
the Gulf of Mexico. The Minnesota, the river at 
his feet, takes rank in length before the Hudson ; 
and, at high water, is navigable Westward for three 
hundred miles. North of him is the colony of Pem- 
bina, whose people come down to trade, a journey 
of seven hundred miles. And he remembers that 
at St. Anthony he heard the hiss of the steamer 
which plies on the waters of the Mississippi, above 
the falls one hundred miles ; a distance which the 
removal of some obstructions is to increase to four 
hundred miles. He thinks of the Missouri stretch- 
ing its way to the West more than two thousand 
miles. He calls to mind its mao-uificent entrance 
into the Mississippi, and the immense volume which 
it pours through the State of Missouri. He thinks 



14 



of the Ohio, coming down a thousand miles from 
the Western slope of the Alleghanies ; of the Cum- 
berland and the Tennessee, the last sweeping its 
current far into the State of Alabama; of the Ar. 
kansas and the Red River, coming down from fifteen 
hundred to two thousand miles from the West. And 
now it occurs to him how distant he is from the At- 
lantic shore. Green Bay, that some few years since 
used to lie at so vast a distance West, lies now three 
hundred miles to the Eastward ; beyond it come the 
great lakes ; and then four hundred miles further to 
the Atlantic ! Yet the point where he stands is 
but little more than one-third of the distance to the 
shores of our country on the Pacific ! 

And now what impression is fixed upon the 
mind of the traveller from the East ? An impres- 
sion of the vastness of his country far beyond any 
thing that he had ever conceived before ; that the 
East is soon to be a mere trifling adjunct of the West 
— no, not of the West, for the great West is still be- 
yond him, but of the great central valley ; that the 
heart of our country is, beyond all question, to be on 
the borders of the Mississippi. Though most of the 
land seems vacant, yet towns and villages are spring- 
ing up with immense rapidity. But let emigrants 
come in such numbers as they will ; let Europe pour 
her living masses on our shores — on these wide 
fields many years must elapse, before it shall not 
seem that as fast as they come they are scattered 
and lost. And now Eastern Asia begins to be stir- 
red, and the people of China are crowding to our 
Western shores ! In due time, this land is to be 



15 



filled. All ! what shall "be its destiny then ? Shall 
the republic "be preserved? Shall our posterity 
have freedom to worship God ? Shall this land 
be a land of Gospel light when it shall number its 
three hundred or five hundred millions ? These are 
questions of fearful import, not only to our children, 
and our children's children, but to the whole world. 
The battle of the great day — for pure religion and 
for the freedom of mankind — is, I am persuaded, to 
be fought in that great valley. " Multitudes, multi- 
tudes in the valley of decision ; for the day of the 
Lord is near in the valley of decision ; " not, we may 
trust, with confused noise of warriors, and with gar- 
ments rolled in blood, but with the weapons of light 
and truth, against the powers of error and darkness ; 
and whoever wins that valley will, in one hundred 
years hence, rule the world. If evangelical truth, 
how auspicious the day ! If Romanism, or Roman- 
ism combined with infidelity and socialism, and 
agrarianism, — for Rome will league with any thing 
on earth or in hell to crush the rising power of free- 
dom and truth, — then how dismal the cloud that 
shall shut out even the light of hope from all man- 
kind ! If our great experiment of freedom and of 
self-government fails, what further continent re- 
mains? what other wilderness, whither freedom 
and truth may flee for shelter ? If this land, with 
its advancing millions shall be lost to true religion, 
can the world supply the missionaries that are once 
more to conquer it for Christ ? Believe it, we stand 
at a point of more momentous interest to our coun- 
try than that occupied by the Pilgrims at Plymouth, 



16 



or by our fathers at the time of the Revolution. 
Other men have labored, and we are entered into 
their labors. The Reformers, the early Puritans, 
the Pilgrims, they who saved this land from the de- 
signs of France and the Pope, they who established 
the constitution under which we became a nation, 
rather than a neighborhood of feeble and disjointed 
States, — all these, each in their day, labored for our 
good. How rich the harvest for which our hands 
have not labored ! But if we have entered into 
harvests prepared by the toils of others, we have 
also entered into their labors. By the toils of others 
this land was prepared, freedom achieved, and the 
institutions of government, of learning and religion 
established; by our labors, under God, all these 
blessings are to be preserved. The Lord seems to 
have ordained that such blessings shall not be pre- 
served without labor. Since we cannot send mis- 
sionaries to papal lands, God is bringing the subjects 
of papal despotism to our doors, and planting them 
in the midst of our bibles, churches, and schools, 
and under the protection of our civil institutions 
and laws. Since we have felt it a trouble to send 
missionaries in adequate numbers to the heathen, 
God is bringing the heathen hither. And remem- 
ber that the single nation from which they come, 
numbers its four hundred millions. She can spare 
a hundred millions for us in fifty years, and grow all 
the stronger and the richer. Now God will make 
the Christians of this land labor for life. They 
shall hold forth the light of truth, they shall plant 
and sustain the institutions of learning and religion 



17 



in this land, or they shall be overwhelmed ! O 
my people, blessed with such light and freedom and 
prosperity, preserve this land ! O my people now 
on the stage of action, gird yourselves for the con- 
test ! Xo future generations can do your work. 
~No amount of effort and liberality on the part of 
your children and your children's children can re- 
medy the want of effort and liberality now ! Xow 
the character of your country is forming ; now it 
is plastic, and may be moulded. The next genera- 
tion may see it fixed, either for good or for evil, for 
a thousand years ! So speaks the voice of Divine 
Providence to us ; and never was a more momentous 
trust given to any people or to any generation, than 
that which the Lord has devolved upon us, — to save 
this land for freedom and for Christ. 

Having viewed our country as a field for Chris- 
tian effort, let us consider, 

2. THE WORK TO BE DOZSTE. 

1. There is ample room for the most active ex- 
ertions of Christians of every name. Let none envy 
the prosperity of others, but rejoice that by any 
means the Gospel is preached in that widely extend- 
ed field. May the Lord of the Harvest send forth 
laborers into his harvest ; and send whom he will. 
The only fear is, that with the intensest activity of 
all, the fields may spread beyond the reach of all 
the reapers. 

2. Xo means of doing good which God has ap- 
pointed, or which has been tested by experience, 
should be neglected. Send teachers. Encourage 



18 



the emigration of pious families ; if in colonies, their 
concentrated light will shine the brighter ; if 
singly, they will still be the salt of the land. Em- 
ploy the press. Raise up Baxter, Flavel, Edwards, 
Legh Richmond, Andrew Fuller, Payson and 
Nevins ; multiply them, and send them out to 
preach the Gospel by every fireside, with their best 
digested discourses, and in their holiest frames. 
Send the colporteur, to distribute books and tracts, 
to converse with people by the wayside, and in the 
remotest cabins where the minister of the Gospel 
has not yet reached. Better than this, send the 
Bible. If you send Baxter and Flavel, it is surely 
better to send Moses and the Prophets, and the 
Apostles, and Evangelists with the words of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Send the Sabbath 
School agent. Let him gather the children and 
establish a school wherever he can, and wait not for 
the gathering of a Church. 

But, 3. While we give all due importance to 
these methods of doing good, surely no enlightened 
friend of Christianity would advise us to rely exclu- 
sively on these, or to regard them in any other light 
than as auxiliary to the instrumentalities which God 
has ordained, the ministry and the Church. If some 
hundreds of individual men were sent to scatter 
seed wheat, broadcast, over the untilled forests and 
prairies of the West, here and there a stalk would, 
beyond question, spring up and bring forth fruit, 
sixty or an hundred fold. Here and there a few 
continuous rods of ground would flourish with a most 
exuberant harvest. But if one should then draw the 



19 



conclusion that the means peculiarly adapted to 
that western field, — the cheapest and the most 
efficient means, — is not to clear the forests, and till 
the prairies, and fence the fields, and plant the hus- 
bandman to cultivate and nourish, and gather by a 
steady and uniform labor ; but to send itinerants to 
scatter the seed wheat and pass hastily onward, and 
then to write back and publish glowing accounts of 
how much seed wheat they have scattered, and 
how, here and there, a mighty stalk has sprung up 
and flourished, no conclusion could be more erro- 
neous ; no husbandry could be more mistaken and 
thriftless than that which should concentrate the 
main energies of the country on such a system of 
efforts as these. So in cultivating the spiritual field. 
The regular, permanent, indispensable agencies, are 
the ministry and the Church. ~No agencies are so 
economical, none are so efficient, as these. These 
are the agencies which God ordained. The isolated 
fire, kindled up by the flying agent, dies without the 
fostering care of the ministry and the Church. The 
broad woodlands and prairies of the West abound in 
scattered Christians, who, on removing from the sanc- 
tuaries of the East, sought out some well watered and 
fertile plain where they could grow rich, rather than 
some neighborhood of Christian institutions where 
their souls might be fed, and where their children 
might be trained up for Cod. The too frequent result 
of such a choice has been backsliding or open aposta- 
sy. It was not without reason that Christ gave as- 
cension gifts for the edifying of the Church. Even 
in the midst of a Christian community, the Christian 



20 



who forsakes the assembling of himself with the 
Church, as the manner of some is, becomes soon a 
withered branch. The communities who tiy to dis- 
pense with the sanctuary, the ministry, and the 
Church, always find religion decaying among them, 
and vice and crime progressing. Let the process go 
on, and they become as heathen. The Christian 
Churches, who conclude to dispense with pastors, 
and to employ casual and transient laborers, ever 
grow weaker and weaker ; their policy of saving ex- 
pense always resulting like the policy of the farmer 
who starves his land through parsimony, and loses 
his farm. We can by no means dispense with the 
Divine ordinances, the sanctuary, the ministry, and 
the Church. All other societies and agencies for 
the propagation of Christianity, for the maintenance 
of truth, or for reformation in morals, depend upon 
the Church. All become powerless and die when- 
ever the Church decays. The Church dies without 
the ministry ; the ministry dies without the Church. 
God has appointed the one for the " edifying of the 
body of Christ," and he made the other " the pillar 
and ground of the truth." Whatever other agencies 
we may employ, we can by no means dispense with 
these as first and foremost. If therefore we would 
evangelize the West, we must by no means make 
the Church and the ministry a secondary concern. 
Let flying agents wake up here and there a soul as 
they shall be able : but to till the field, to gather in 
and to preserve the harvest, to train Christians up 
to the stature of perfect men, to establish fountains 
which shall send forth streams of living water, and 



21 



help to swell the river that shall make glad the city 
of our God, plant the Church, and nourish it till it 
shall be able to live without your care. This is the 
cheapest, the most efficient, the most permanent of 
all agencies for planting and perpetuating the Gos- 
pel in that vacant field. I hesitate not to declare 
my full conviction that the work of Home Missions 
is the great cause of all causes to be sustained for 
the Evangelization of this land. 

But from what quarter are the missionaries to 
be furnished for that vast field ? Who are to take 
the places of those who have already been sent out, 
when these shall be dead ? What would have be- 
come of New England, when the first ministers and 
other educated men who came from the mother 
country died out, had not our fathers with such ad- 
mirable forecast founded their institutions of learn- 
ing ? Without these the glory of ]New England, as 
well as the prosperity and stability of our country, 
could not have been. All that our fathers toiled 
for would have been lost. And now who are to 
take the places of the missionaries who have been 
sent out, when these are dead ? AYho are to supply 
the amazing wants of that field in coming years? 
Already have we reached a point where the East 
can no longer supply the present demand for the 
ministry in the West. If it could do so, western 
men trained in the West would be more serviceable. 
And certain it is, that western men, educated or 
uneducated, — or perhaps educated by papists or in- 
fidels, or by those who are indifferent or hostile to 
religion, — are henceforth, to mould the character, 



22 



and wield the power and destinies of that great 
West. What shall we do for the West, to save it 
for Christ ; to enlist its mighty energies for coming 
time, in the cause of truth and salvation ? Preach 
the Gospel there, say you ? Plant there the insti- 
tutions ofreligion ? Yes : but where are the minis- 
ters to be raised up for the next hundred, or even 
for the next twenty years ? It is true that the 
several States will do something for Colleges. But 
the States will not, and cannot, care for the interests 
of religion. It is already decided, — freedom de- 
mands it — that whatever pertains to religion is to 
be cared for voluntarily by the people in their do- 
mestic cajDacity, and not by the State. We cannot 
alter this without giving up our liberties. We can- 
not alter this without running the hazard that 
Popery or Infidelity may in time be the established 
religion of the state. If we care for the future 
interests of religion in the West, we must look to it 
ourselves, and trust not to the States. Given, then, 
a certain work to be done, — to plant the institutions 
of religion in that land, and to provide for their 
permanence, — we might well, not only bear the ex- 
pense, but pay for the privilege, of instructing the 
young, of moulding the mass of educated mind, of 
training not only the ministers, but the physicians, 
the lawyers, the teachers, the legislators, and judges 
of the land. It is no objection, but an immense 
advantage, that the Colleges which we aid in sus- 
taining, educate not the ministers alone, but train 
with them the men destined to fill the other profes- 
sions, and mould their minds under the same genial 



23 



influences. Let the state train all these in institu- 
tions from which sectarian or infidel prejudices shall 
exclude all the moulding influences of religion, and 
how disastrous must be the result in the next gene- 
ration ! Infidels and demagogues will love to take 
this whole work out of your hands. Rome will be 
extremely glad to be allowed to supply that whole 
field with institutions of learning. Willingly will 
she furnish all possible facilities for training our 
children and our children's children who may emi- 
grate to that field. And then she will rule the field, 
which, whoever governs, will in the next century 
govern our country and govern the world. But plant 
suitable Protestant institutions of learning, and the 
experiment has proved, as often as it has been tried, 
that the institutions which fetter the mind and chain 
the conscience can never compete with them. Fail 
to do this; let Rome preoccupy the field, and the 
time may come when, even in Xew England, there 
may be no longer freedom to read the Bible or to 
worship God. 

"Will any one say, Send missionaries, plant 
Churches, but leave tJtem to see to the institutions of 
learning ? This the missionaries and Christians at 
the West are endeavoring to do. They feel that the 
salvation of their Churches, and that the cause of 
truth and freedom in that land, depends upon their 
success in these efforts. But the people are not ho- 
mogeneous nor of one mind, that they may, like the 
Pilgrim Fathers of Xew England, unite their ener- 
gies for the promotion of learning and religion. The 
friends of truth are scattered and feeble. The dirfi- 



24 



culties of a new settlement in a new country press 
hard upon theni, and must overwhelm them in their 
efforts for this work, unless they have aid. With 
great sacrifices on the part of the men engaged in 
these institutions, and on the part of the western 
ministers and Churches, a few of their Colleges had 
struggled for life, and would have died, but for the 
timely aid of this Society. By this aid some of them 
lived till their friends at the West were able to take 
the burden, and now mainly by western liberality, 
they are endowed. Some are still struggling for life, 
and without aid continued for some time longer, they 
cannot live. It seems therefore necessary, to the 
completion and carying out of the work of Home 
Missions, to help our brethren of the West in sus- 
taining, for a season, the institutions which are not 
only to add immensely to the results of Home Mis- 
sions, but which are indisj)ensable to secure the fruits 
of all these labors, and to render them permanent. 
This, and this alone, is the work of the Society for 
the promotion of Collegiate and Theological Edu- 
cation at the West : not to furnish these institutions 
with an endowment, but to aid them till the friends 
of education and religion in the West shall be able 
to sustain them ; and leave their further support or 
their endowment to their hands. 

Something ought now to be said with regard to 
the Society for the promotion of these objects. It 
arose from the necessities of the case. When these 
necessities shall cease, then the work of the Society 
is done, and the Society will die. In that wide field of 
the West, colleges and seminaries were springing up 



25 



in great numbers ; more than were needed ; more 
than could be sustained. Many institutions were 
commenced without counting the cost. They could 
not hope to live a year without aid. Immediately 
agents came from every part of the West. Our 
Churches were beset with innumerable applicants. 
Many of these applicants collected scarcely enough 
to pay the expense of their agencies. Sums were 
collected large in the aggregate, but being divided 
into innumerable parcels, were frittered away and 
lost. One after another of these hastily projected 
institutions died. The friends of education at the 
West were discouraged. The charities of the East, 
under such a system, dried up. The more import- 
ant and indispensable seminaries at the West began 
to despair. Then this Society was formed ; that, by 
selecting a suitable number of institutions in the 
right locations, and formed under right auspices ; 
by restoring confidence to the Eastern Churches, and 
inspiring courage among the friends of education at 
the West, these selected institutions might live, till 
the Churches around them should be so far establish- 
ed as to be able to rally for their support. 

The effort- has already been crowned with eminent 
success. Several institutions of incalculable value 
have been saved, when, otherwise, all would have 
fallen into one indiscriminate ruin. The mischiefs 
which must have resulted from such a catastrophe 
cannot be told. They could not have been repaired 
in centuries. In saving these institutions, a work 
has been done of incalculable importance to our 
country and to the world. The Western Reserve, 



26 



Marietta, Wabash, and Illinois Colleges and Lane 
Seminary have been saved. Some of them are al- 
ready beyond the necessity of Eastern aid. Knox 
College, Wittemberg College, the College at Beloit 
and that at Davenport in Iowa, and the Seminary of 
the German Evangelical Conference of the West in 
Missouri, have been added to the list of institu- 
tions receiving aid. The last year I stood at the 
door of the College in Davenport, which overlooks 
a prospect of unlimited extent in Iowa and Illinois, 
along the valley of the Rock river, and of the Missis- 
sippi ; a prospect of beauty and richness scarcely to 
be surpassed. I cannot tell the thoughts that came 
crowding in my mind, as I contemplated the work 
which that institution is destined to accomplish for 
the many thousands of people that are eventually to 
cover the plains and valleys spread out in prospect 
from its site. I thought of the cheerful spires, the 
prosperous towns and villages, the plentiful farms, 
that are to cover these plains. I thought of the 
missionaries and pastors, of the laborers in the de- 
partments of medicine and law, of the teachers, and 
the legislators who are yet to proceed from that in- 
fant College. I asked myself, Can the Eastern 
Churches afford to let it languish and die ? No, not 
for a thousand times the amount that it will require 
to make it live and prosper to the end of time ! 

Let me say something also of another of the Col- 
leges aided by this Society ; that of the German 
Evangelical Conference of the West. Some sixteen 
years ago, one who is now among the directors of 
this Society, — seeing the immense influx of Germans 



27 



who were as sheep without a shepherd, — took meas- 
ures, in connection with a few friends, to procure, 
through the late lamented Mr. G-allaudet, two evan- 
gelical missionaries from the Missionary Seminary 
in Basle in Europe. They came, and have labored 
with patient and unwearied devotion with great suc- 
cess, and with the warm approval of all the Ameri- 
can pastors and Churches who have been conversant 
with them and with their labors. Others have come 
to their aid, till they now number more than thirty 
evangelical ministers, and twice as many Churches, 
on a basis of faith and order very nearly resembling 
that of the Churches of Connecticut. Xearly all these 
ministers are supported by their congregations with- 
out Home Missionary aid. They assured me that if 
they had suitable men, they could at once place fifty 
infields where nearly all would be sustained by the 
people who should receive the benefit of their 
labors. They suppose that there are two hundred 
thousand Germans in Missouri, and the number 
is rapidly increasing : many of whom are earnestly 
desiring a pure Gospel, and longing for some one to 
break to them the bread of life. But such laborers 
are not to be found. Under these circumstances the 
Conference has erected the Seminary, to train up 
laborers for that wide and promising field. Should 
they have done otherwise ? Ought they not to be 
encouraged and sustained \ It was my privilege to 
meet some of their pastors, to visit some of them at 
their homes, to enter some of their Churches, and to 
pass over the rich rolling prairies, and through the 
forests that border the Missouri to their seminary in 



28 



the remote wilderness. There one learned profes- 
sor, a man eminent in his native country, was labor- 
ing on a salary of three hundred dollars a year. 
Another, a polished, courteous, learned and devoted 
man, was laboring for simple food and shelter. The 
Churches, as they are able, send in a supply of food. 
All take up a collection once a year for the semina- 
ry. But the poverty of many of their people upon 
their first planting themselves in the wilderness can 
scarcely be understood by people dwelling at the 
East. The difficulties and hardships of new settle- 
ments in the wilderness are theirs in full measure : 
though their proverbial industry and frugality must 
ere long place them in abundance ; and then their 
beloved College will live and prosper. But in the 
mean time they are in deep waters, in need of every 
thing. I slept one night in their Seminary, and 
when I parted from these dear brethren, I left them 
with the deep conviction, that the small amount of 
aid for which they ask, will be as judicious and as 
productive an investment of funds for the promotion 
of the cause of Christ in the Great Valley, as can 
possibly be made ; and that the friends of our coun- 
try, and the friends of the Redeemer, who care for 
the salvation of the future millions of the descend- 
ants of these Germans, can by no means afford to 
let their infant Seminary die. These two were the 
only institutions under the patronage of our So- 
ciety, which a hasty tour at the West permitted me 
to see. It is well known that the others are of equal, 
or of still greater importance. If our country is to 
be evangelized, if the great West is not to be given 



29 



up to Infidelity or to Popery ; if the thousands of in- 
fant Churches planted in that field, at so much cost 
and suffering, are hereafter to be supplied with a 
competent ministry ; if the educated minds, not only 
in the ministry, but in the other public callings, — 
which are hereafter to mould the sentiments of the 
people of the great "West, and so to rule our country 
and the world, — are to be trained under Christian 
auspices, these institutions must be sustained. 

As I passed for more than two thousand miles 
along the mighty rivers, through the vast forests, 
and over the ocean-like prairies of the West, how 
often would my fancy move forward one hundred, 
sometimes three hundred, or ^.ve hundred years. 
In imagination I saw these woodlands and prairies 
teeming with inhabitants. The land was a garden ; 
fertile and easy of cultivation, almost beyond the 
power of those who have always remained on the 
Eastern shore of our country to imagine. I saw the 
dwellings embowered in trees ; the highwavs lined 
with venerable elms ; the school-house and the house 
of God rising in every village ; in one word, the 
fairest village on the most beautiful intervale of 
New England, repeated, enlarged, and spread out 
over fields broader in extent than forty Xew Eng- 
lands. I fancied these seminaries, now fostered in 
infancy with so much pains, then established in 
strength and grown venerable with age. Genera- 
tions of their alumni had served Christ and their 
country in their day, and had gone down to the 
grave, leaving the fruits and the monuments of their 
labors behind them. I fancied this : but it was 



30 



scarcely fancy : time will realize this picture, and 
more. In that day the names of the early mission- 
aries, who toiled and suffered as pioneers in that 
field, will be had in remembrance. It will then be told 
what these have done for our country, for the world, 
and for Christ. In that day the seat of influence 
and power in a nation of two hundred millions, or 
of three, or four hundred millions, will be there. 
And then it will be known, that next to the direct 
work of rearing and sustaining Churches in that 
field, was the work of planting and sustaining the 
Colleges and Seminaries which gave to these 
Churches their perpetuity ; and which trained the 
men, in the various professions, whose influence 
fashioned and controlled society there when it was 
in the forming state. The Lord prosper this work. 
The Lord bless those who have it in their hearts to 
aid in laying thus the foundations for many genera- 
tions. Amen. 



